


Nothing Here Will Bloom or Rise

by agent_orange



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Marijuana, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 13:51:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1746959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_orange/pseuds/agent_orange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark's been trying for months to convince himself he hasn't been thinking about this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Here Will Bloom or Rise

It's been snowing for over three hours, soft white flakes that pile up on the ground and don't melt at all, and Eduardo predicts there'll be at least another eighteen inches by morning. His flight home will probably get cancelled, not that Mark minds having him a few extra days. His father will be furious, Mark is sure, but it seems like his father is furious whenever Eduardo isn't perfect, and nobody is perfect.

"Shouldn't you have seen this coming?" Mark asks. "You always guess the temperature, and you can tell how much it'll rain. Pretty stupid of you not to just go over spring break instead."

"Screw you," Eduardo says, chucking the tennis ball in his hand at Mark's head. It goes wide, bouncing off the wall and landing on the beat-up couch. "I'm sorry I wanted to see my family. Not all of us can be as independent as you, you know."

"You told me you hate visiting there because your extended family swarms you and you never get to spend time with your immediate," Mark points out. He's right, and Eduardo knows it. Eduardo's here because he likes spending time with Mark more than he likes spending time with his—what seem like—hundreds of little cousins.

"And look where spending time with you gets me," Eduardo bitches. "Snowed in with only basic cable. Really, what the fuck is there to _do_ in Dobbs Ferry?"  

Mark shrugs. "Not much," he says. "Sometimes my sisters and I would take the train to the city, on weekends, and just explore or see a game or something, but I haven't spent much time here since I was fourteen. Then again, there wasn't a lot to do at Exeter, either."

"I can't imagine what you'd do if you didn't have a computer," Eduardo says. "Crawl in a hole and die, probably."  

"Thanks for your vote of confidence," Mark says. "Much appreciated. Uh, there's a pizza place about a mile away. We could snowshoe there."

Eduardo just stares at him. "I'm from Miami," he says, sounding like he can't believe Mark just said what he did. "Why the fuck would I know how to snowshoe? You know what—hang on." He pushes himself up off the floor and is quickly on the other side of the room. After a minute or so of fumbling around in his suitcase, he pulls out the Altoids tin Mark knows he uses to keep his weed.

Of course he brought joints to Mark's parents' house. He knows they're good, though. Not the ones Dustin rolls; the high-quality kind Mark knows Wardo gets from a guy in his Ec 10 class.

Mark's parents are skiing in Vermont. They're all alone in the house, and the closest neighbors are a quarter-mile away.

"Let's do it," Mark says.

*

Mark is stoned. Mark is really, _really_ stoned, and Wardo's no better, bobbing his head to Mark's Shins CD like it's the best thing he's ever heard.

"Why don't you ever play music when we're in your dorm?" he asks. "I just thought it was because you had shitty taste and were embarrassed about it."

"Dunno," Mark says. His tongue feels thick and heavy in his mouth. He doesn't do this much. Definitely not enough for it to be ordinary. "Guess I'd never listen to it when I code."

"Makes sense," Eduardo says. He nods very intently. Mark thinks his head might fall off if he keeps doing that.

The song ends, changes to something Mark can't remember the name of—the CD's a mix. Eduardo wrinkles his nose and fumbles with the 'off' button a few times before actually hitting it and stopping the music.

"Are you hungry?" Mark asks. Normally he ignores the pang in his stomach that tells him he should stop writing and feed it before he, you know, passes out or something, but this hunger's very different. "I'm fucking starving."  

Downstairs, they find a jumbo bag of Cheetos and half of a Devil's food cake Mark's mom made. It doesn't take them long to eat everything; luckily, Mark's munchies are completely gone afterward.

He notices, somewhat abstractly, that Eduardo's pupils are blown wide, dark and intense. He's staring right at Mark, and it feels like too much.

"You have..." Eduardo says, thumb coming up to brush the cheese dust from Mark's lip; he lingers there, and then his thumb seems to slip, though Mark's not sure if it was an accident or if that's what Eduardo meant to do all along. "Can I kiss you?"

And there it is. What Mark's been trying for months to convince himself he hasn't been thinking about. But he has, and he wants it.

"Yeah," he replies. Eduardo pulls his finger away and carefully presses their mouths together, like Mark's scared and could flee at any minute. The only way he knows how to disabuse Eduardo of that notion is to just go for it, opening his mouth so their tongues touch, and even through the mixed flavors of frosting and spice, Eduardo's tongue is amazing. His thumbs are touching the hinges of Mark's jaw, almost rubbing there. It feels nice. It feels comforting.

Eduardo's thigh is in between Mark's. He's hard, but Mark mostly just feels the warmth against his leg, not much pressure at all. Probably because of the clothes between them. The kitchen counter is digging painfully into Mark's back, but Eduardo is biting his neck and possibly murmuring something in Portuguese that sounds really sexy. Mark can't understand anything but his name; just the tone of Eduardo's voice as his lips move against Mark's skin makes his heart beat faster. His hips cant forward involuntarily, only the bone bumps the bone of Eduardo's hip and it kind of hurts. That's not an area Mark has much padding. Actually, he doesn't have much padding _anywhere_.

"We should—" Eduardo pants before he sucks a bruise onto Mark's shoulder. "We should go back upstairs."  

"Nobody's home," Mark points out. They can fuck right here on the kitchen floor.

"Wanna do it _right_ ," Eduardo says, and okay, that does sound pretty good to Mark. Being spread out on the bed instead of on the cold, hard granite. Mark's bed is really warm, especially in comparison.

Getting up the stairs is no small feat. Eduardo refuses to keep his mouth and hands to himself for a couple minutes, so it takes them a lot longer, with him slamming Mark into the wall and knocking over picture frames along the way. By the time they get to his room, Mark's jeans are halfway down his thighs and only one of his arms is still in his hoodie.

Eduardo, on the other hand, is practically pristine in his fucking ironed sweater and corduroy pants. Even his hair is coiffed, or whatever he does to it. The only thing that's missing are his shoes, kicked off after they got home from the grocery run Mark's mom asked them to make this morning.

Mark has this desperate urge to mess up Eduardo's perfect façade, to mess up his hair and rumple his clothes, make him sweat and pant and fall apart. Wardo's always perfect and Mark is always doing something wrong, but right now, that's not what this is. This is them, _together_ , and both of them are right. It feels right.

Eduardo nudges the door open with his elbow and locks it behind them, not bothering to kiss Mark against it because he leads them over to the bed. _Mark's_ bed. Mark's _childhood_ bed, which still has X-Men sheets on it because he never bothered to get new ones after middle school. Mark goes down hard, the backs of his knees hitting the mattress before the rest of his body does. It's painful, but Eduardo's over him almost immediately, getting Mark's jeans the rest of the way off.

"You fucker," Mark manages to say. He likes that Wardo's taking charge, though. His tongue slips into Mark's mouth again, and it's almost more intimate than what they're about to do.

Eduardo's hands feel like they're electric on Mark's body; his nerve endings feel like the little blue sparks that sometimes flash from the outlet in Mark's room. His mouth is soft and sweet-tasting, even better than the weed. Mark wants to drink him in and never taste anything else again. It's only December, and they only met a few months ago, but Mark doesn't know how they went so long without doing this. Apparently, Eduardo feels similarly. Or at least that's what his actions say.

(Mark likes words better than actions. He understands actions. He does not understand subtext and body language and the meanings between the lines.)

Really, though, it doesn't matter to Mark as long as they can do this forever. _Actually_ forever. Never setting foot outside his dorm would be completely fine with Mark if it means he and Eduardo can fuck whenever they feel like it.

"You're thinking too much," Eduardo interrupts, and it's a little scary how well he already knows Mark. "Just relax."

Of course, that's easier said than done when Eduardo ducks his head down down down and takes Mark's dick into his mouth. His fucking perfect mouth. The question of whether Wardo's done this before slips into Mark's head because Wardo only needs a few seconds before he exhales and closes his lips around another few inches.

It's hot and wet and perfect and all Mark can think is more, Wardo, _more_. Possibly he says (okay, gasps) this once (okay, multiple times). When Eduardo laughs at that, it feels even more amazing. Mark fists his fingers in the t-shirt he's still wearing so he doesn't, like, rip Eduardo's hair out or anything.

This just keeps getting better and better. Mark didn't even know it could. Eduardo gently eases the fabric from one of Mark's hands, squeezes it once, and then puts it on the back of his head. _It's probably okay to touch him now,_ Mark thinks. It's probably a dick move not to, and Mark is a dick, but he tries not to be one to Eduardo. He lets go of his shirt and carefully touches the side of Eduardo's face.

 _Holy shit_. Mark can feel his cock pressing against Wardo's cheek, and by extension, his own hand. Holy _shit_. It almost makes Mark come right then, but he closes his eyes and thinks in binary and Java and concentrates very hard.

That does the trick, but just barely. Eventually, the pressure building at the base of his spine is sure to overtake him. Normally he doesn't get this close to the edge this quickly—not that Mark's sexual encounters happen on anything like a consistent schedule—but it's just... _Eduardo_. He's probably, in all honesty, the most attractive person Mark's ever met. And not only is he attractive; he's somebody Mark actually likes and cares about, which is rare enough.

When Mark does come, it's explosive. To say the very least.

Eduardo's hair is wound so tightly in Mark's fingers it has to hurt, what with all the tugging Mark can't help but do, and all the muscles in Mark's body are tense as his back arches into a bow off the bed. He feels Eduardo swallow, which makes Mark remember that he's the only one who's gotten off.

Slowly, Mark's pulse and breathing inch closer to normal, and he's able to open his eyes again. Eduardo's mouth is shiny and wet, practically obscene. Mark wants to kiss it even redder than it already is, but then he remembers Wardo just swallowed his...—Mark doesn't think that's something he wants to taste.

Apparently Wardo doesn't care. He pulls Mark's head down and kisses him, mouth open just enough for Mark's own mouth to taste salty when they break apart.

"Fuck," Mark says. And then, "Jesus, take off your goddamn pants already."

Eduardo does him one better: he shucks his cords, sure, but he also tugs his sweater over his head and then he's only in his thin cotton undershirt and socks. He's practically naked, and it's all for Mark.

 _Mine_.

This is...new. Mark's never touched another guy before, and Eduardo's dick feels weird and foreign in his hand. Not bad, necessarily, but if nothing else, the fact that everything's reversed startles him a bit. He likes the weight of it, though, and how Eduardo's slim legs look splayed wide, Mark kneeling between them. Partway through, Mark's wrist gets sore like it does when he's writing; he doesn't want to stop, but this kind of motion is terrible for his carpal tunnel.

"It's fine," Eduardo says. He's short of breath, body jerking up to push into Mark's hand more often than not. Mark's fingers are starting to get slippery, sticky, but he's not deterred at all; instead, it just spurs him on to ignore the pain for a few more minutes and push through and make Wardo come.

His eyes go impossibly wide as he jerks against Mark's palm, body racked with shudders. Mark would say something comforting if he knew how. He manages to choke out an _it's okay, just let go_. Wardo does.

The look on his face is beautiful, and Mark usually only appreciates the aesthetic value of, like, lines and lines of perfect code. It's what tips him off that this...thing is more serious than he thought (which was already at dangerous levels of 'giving a shit'). He doesn't know how to act, though; he only ever has meaningless sex.

What he does know is that there's going to be a huge mess in the morning if he doesn't clean up soon, and while normally Mark doesn't care if anything's clean, scrubbing come out of his happy trail doesn't feel all that great. There are no washcloths in the bathroom, so he wets a t-shirt that looks pretty clean, wipes himself down and hands it to Eduardo.

He doesn't mean to fall asleep, but Mark's body, apparently, has other ideas, and he nods off with his head resting on Wardo's shoulder.

*

Back at school, nothing really changes. Mark appreciates that. He doesn't do well with change; that's why he avoids deviating from his routine if at all possible. Wardo forces food into Mark and Mark into bed and then to classes, worrying over him just like his mother does.

Dustin flirts with the idea of changing his major yet again; he gets frustrated by the power naps in between long coding tears. _Philosophy,_ he says this time. _Or maybe religion, or history. Anything but Comp Sci._

"Un-declare yourself," Chris suggests. His eyebrows scrunch up in concentration. "Can you even do that? Whatever, just take the classes you want to take and screw the rest. If CS is making you miserable, it's not really worth it."

Mark shakes his head. "Don't be a pussy," he says, earning himself a sharp glare from Chris. "Major in philosophy and you have to go to law school. Study history and you can't do much but teach. And don't even get me started on religion. I know you're so much smarter than those Jesus-worshipping monkeys." Dustin will come back around to CS eventually, Mark knows. In the meantime, Mark doesn't want him to make any asinine mistakes that'll ruin his studies.

Dustin tosses the Xbox controller onto the couch. "I'm going to the d-hall," he says. He might look upset. It's hard for Mark to tell. "Do you want anything, Chris?"

"Fries," Chris responds, not taking his eyes off the screen. "Or pizza. Or wings. Whatever." Once Dustin is gone, Chris pauses the game, turns to Mark, and asks, "Why do you always have to be such an asshole?"

Honestly, Mark wishes he knew.

*

AEPi has this mixer with Northeastern's Hillel for Valentine's Day. Mark would be more than happy to stay in his dorm with his laptop, beer, and a can of Pringles, but Wardo drags him along.

"You don't get out enough," he says. "Wear the blue shirt, not the gray. And no hoodie."

As expected, it sucks. The beer is shitty and the chips some generic brand, and some asshole is cracking his way to what Mark thinks is an old Rod Stewart song. He sees Dustin and Chris, who are shotgunning beers, and Wardo, who's trying to put the moves on some short Asian girl. His questionable dancing probably won't help, but he's South American, he's supposed to have rhythm. The Jewish thing might cancel that out, though.

A pang of what feels like jealousy works its way through Mark's stomach. He doesn't get jealous, he doesn't feel, but he does want that girl the fuck away from Eduardo. Actually, he wants _everybody_ the fuck away from Eduardo, though he doesn't know how to express those feelings, or what to do with them.

Mark finishes his drink and waits for the song to end before approaching Eduardo and the girl.

"Hey," he says, trying to look as sick as possible. "I'm not feeling too great. I'm just gonna go back to the dorm and lie down. You stay and have fun."

Instantly, Eduardo looks concerned, just like Mark knew he would.

"Do you have a fever?" he asks. "Or—shit, Mark, you can't just leave food in your fridge for weeks on end and think you'll be fine if you eat it." He turns to the girl, who's crossed her arms and is wearing a scowl. "I'm really sorry," he says to her, "but if I don't make Mark rest he'll probably sit at his computer for thirty-six hours without eating anything and _damage his body_ —"

"I get it," she interrupts. "Go."

The thing is, Mark doesn't even feel guilty about possibly ruining Eduardo's night and definitely ruining his chance of getting with that girl. Maybe he's a psychopath, or maybe he's just a gigantic asshole.

*

Mark writes code for a whole weekend, getting maybe three hours of sleep as he works on a Comp Sci project. If Eduardo hadn't made him, Mark wouldn't have eaten, drank, pissed, or slept at all. Sometimes he wonders how he's still alive, since Eduardo has classes and a life and shit that doesn't involve Mark. He tries to, at least, but judging by the amount of time he spends in Mark's room, he must think Mark is completely incapable of taking care of himself.

He's right, of course, and Mark only feels a little guilty on nights Eduardo's roommate assumed he'd be out and Eduardo has to sleep in Mark's room. Most of the time, Mark's doing problem sets and they don't even get to fuck. Hence the guilt.

Sometimes he'll wake up in bed, even though he's sure he nodded off in front of the screen, and realizes that it's obviously Wardo's doing. But he's rarely still around when Mark gets up—Eduardo has both early classes and a normal sleep schedule.

It doesn't help that Eduardo's got one massive project after another for his Econ class, meaning he spends the majority of time in Widener Library, poring over books and microfilm that's older than they are. When they do get to see each other, it's normally not long before one of them passes out from exhaustion.

*

Instead of bringing back food for Mark, Eduardo actually drags him off-campus for lunch at some semi-nice restaurant. Mark assumes it's because break is only a couple days away and most of the d-halls are on limited schedule.

His fake ID gets them beers, though just barely, and Eduardo orders for both of them: a Reuben for Mark and a ground turkey burger for himself.

Maybe they can go to New York and bum around for a little bit before classes start back up again.

"I won't...I'll be out of contact for a couple weeks," Eduardo tells him. "My parents and I are visiting family in Brazil, and they, um....nobody really _knows_ , so..."

"Oh," Mark says. His own family is probably sure he's, like, asexual or something at this point, but he doesn't think they'd have an issue if he told them he has a huge boner for his best friend. He and Eduardo talk almost every day. Not doing that for two weeks will be weird; he'll almost definitely go back to not interacting with people. "Okay," he says, because it's not like Wardo can control if he's got a family of fucking homophobes or biphobes or whatever. "I guess I'll just see you when we get back."

"I'm sorry," Eduardo says. "I really wish it didn't have to be this way, Mark."

That feels too intimate for Mark to even acknowledge. He ducks his head and takes another bite of his sandwich.

Mark has never needed anybody before. Starting now would be like saying he's been lying his whole life, and he's not a liar. He doesn't care if Eduardo talks to him or brings him food or sucks his dick.

*

They have two weeks off from Harvard, and Mark hears from him only once. No calls, no emails, no texts. Just a postcard of the Hotel Unique with _Wish you were here!_ in Eduardo's loopy, messy script, the words only covering a small fraction of the available white space.

Mark's mother tries to get him put on anti-depressants because of how much time he spends alone in his room. He just flushes the pills down the toilet, blue ovals disintegrating against the swirl of water.

He makes plans to return to Cambridge a few days before the new semester and counts down how much time he has left before his train leaves.


End file.
